“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
―
C.G. Jung

Emotional Scenery - Inner Dreams:
The colors, music, feelings, flavors and scents of it.
Travelling...

... when things get too serious...

.. it's pretty old, but some things never get too something, right? : )
Super "Flight of the Conchords" ... Thank you!

How to get out of a rut?

While procrastinating, I've found some videos about laziness and mind confusion... well here's a brief on it...

You want to stop the laziness high, right? So...

1. Do you have a Life Purpose? 5, 15, 30 years from now... Because if you don't, how will you ever become motivated about anything?
2. Find out what are your top 10 core values.
3. Where are you in your Life's cycle? (life works in cycles, as we're living there's a natural flow to it. We break up with something, we get motivated to start again, we engage in that energy, reach the climax, and then you go back to feeling you need a new chapter. And it's starts over again...)
4. Vacation... when was the last time you took some good "dolce fare niente" vacations?
5. Habits. Good habits are the momentum for success. Gently with yourself, taking it slowly, start creating good habits towards your goals, dreams, happiness. Ease in...

6. Believe...  "Belief creates the actual fact. (...) There is no more miserable human being, than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. (...) The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes."
_
William James

7. Don't over think it. Start now, right now, act. Just f#$% do it. Stop looking for a quick trick, just put yourself into action.

8. Forget perfection. do what you can, but do it. Take the pressure out of yourself. Let the habit grow in you.

Keep that Positive Motivation

“The best way to learn, create and move forward is to be decisive. It’s OK to be wrong, but make a decision because then you’ll learn. At least you’ll know you’re wrong and can move on."
_
Jason Norcross 

In the beginning there were Legos...

I remember, as I was little, in size and experience, to dream of becoming like the grown up people. As I played with Lego, I built houses and in those houses there were families living and rushing from one side to another. They were busy going to work, they were busy driving, they were busy cooking or re-doing their entire house!

That was my idea of what is was to grow up. I idealised that I would be self assured, organised, task's exterminator, goals achiever, and as easy as finding a pen in a woman’s purse, I would find the Love of my Life, get married and have kids.

That was what made sense to dream about and I couldn't wait to be old enough for it to happen. There was just school, the only thing that didn’t fit so well in the plans of growing up, but I did Ok. I was one of the teachers favourite, good grades, excellent report cards and during intervals I was the one that out stood everyone with my super fast run. No one could catch me and I would catch everyone!

- Simple and True Happiness...

What changed?

Doubts, second guessing and trusting others more than in myself. At the same speed as my body changed, a different look at myself started to happen. People started speaking to me differently, certain actions, words and thoughts ceased to be appropriate, and I couldn’t understand others so well anymore: were they speaking the truth, or lying. Before, when I was that little person, a lie would last a day or two at the most, but from this moment on, I understood that lies could last almost a life time, or 10 years.

Everything became 6th dimensional. I had what my eyes were seeing, but my nose would get a different impression and my mouth would say something completely unexpected. My ears would devil me with improbable secrets, my arms would fall into the wrong bodies and my mind would be firing up with a million different conclusions.

Of course this led me to that huge question: who am I?

I thought I knew who I was. I knew exactly what I liked, what I wanted and all the schedules to have an easy Life, away from mom’s railings. But since my body changed, the outside world seemed to change too… Something had changed.

From those years on, I had to find myself again. My routines, my likings and new friends. Only the dreams stay the same, but were kept locked somewhere safe, from the outside world and from myself also.

I had already found Love, but in the quest of wanting to answer that huge question, who am I, I was led to question even the Love I had found. This new 6th dimensional world had so many different lights, smells, colours and feelings, I wonder if I didn’t need to explore more.

And here’s where I started losing myself, even more. I started to look in the outside world what had always been inside me. I continued to question who I was, not to the person that mattered the most, but to others, to consequences, to this volatile outside world that changes at every second.

Because it took me this long to understand that this “me” that questions is the same “me” that answers, and it’s the same “me” that is in the world, and, prepare yourself, it is also the World! I only now realize that what I was looking for, all along, has always been with me since that first start, playing Legos.

It’s too much to take in, I get it. We also get so easily distracted with our jobs, fun times, sports, romance, family, but, when things get taught and we start to wonder what is it that we’re doing were, in this little blue planet, that’s when BIG questions start making a mess.

Usually science backs up our naive deep questions, like: where do I come from, where am I going, who am I, with a strong dose of chemistry and whirling quantic physics, complicated enough to put our Hercule Poirot persona away for some time, but then it comes back, and we ask again, where does it all come from???  in the lovely storytelling that society offers, there's that tiny detail that lingers, where is the beginning, and just like an ugly scratch in our favourite vinyl, ouch, it hurts our soul.

Where does it all come from? Where is the sense behind everything?

Terence McKenna used to say, modern science is based on the principle, “give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest”, and the one free miracle is the emergence of all the matter and energy in the Universe from nothing in a single instant, together with all the laws that govern it.

It’s the same as thinking, my computer works fine, my car, my body, but who design it? errr, no one, nothing… Where does it all come from?

I was touched with what Yogi Dada Gunamuktananda said, and as him, so many others.

“Both the substance and the intention of the Universe come from a deeper reality than the material one that we normally perceive with our minds and senses, and that reality is consciousness and all-pervading blissful awareness inherent in everybody and everything. Just as your own consciousness is the essence of your own mind, cosmic consciousness is the essence of the entire Universe. It exists within everything and everything it exists within it, essentially everybody and everything is part of and full of consciousness.”

Everything that exists is Life. Even a creature we normally term dead is alive. The process of dissolution creates Life. Everything consists of molecules in constant motion. We appear to be solid, yet this solidity is an illusion.

Lobsang Rampa gives us an amazing example to help us understand the abstractness in this thought:

“Consider a creature of infinite smallness who can stand at a distance from a human
body and look at it. The creature would see whirling suns, spiral nebulae, and streams akin to the Milky Way. In the soft parts of the body, the flesh the molecules would be widely dispersed. In the hard substances, the bones, the molecules would be dense, bunched together and giving the appearance of a great cluster of stars (…) Each Man is a Universe, a Universe in which planets molecules spin around a central sun. Every rock, twig, or drop of water is composed of molecules
in constant, un-ending motion. (…) Everything is relative, a wall which is solid to you may not be solid to a ghost or to a creature from the astral”

So many times we’re caught up feeling alienated, sad, misfit, unfairly put away, or sick, or lost, because materialism separates people and religion segregates them. But, if we get out of the “Box” and we imagine ourselves being part of the same matter that constitutes the stars and galaxies, we’re no longer alone, right? We’re made of the same thing that makes the sun shine! and the concept of everlasting Joy becomes tangible.

Instead of validating a world of isolation, let’s validate a world of oneness and hope for the Future. We’ll be happier! Not only as individuals but as a society. Let’s all think Love and therefore we are Love. Remember Descartes: “I think therefore I am” or according to Yogic philosophy: “I don’t think and there I am”. Just because we can’t prove there’s a Universal Consciousness it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There’re so many things that exist, that we can’t prove materially. Gunamuktananda gives a very simple and irrefutable example: can you prove a mom’s love for her child? because you can’t materially prove it, doesn’t it mean it’s not there?

Max Plank, German physicists of the late 19th and early 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, explains what is Consciousness to him: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. (…) Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve. (…) As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”

Or, “universally” known scientist, Mr. Albert Einstein: “The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvellously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.”

Our brain is good at collecting data and performing analysis on that data, but to gain consciousness and become one full-complete happy being we can’t depend only on the brain. It’s bias. It echoes assumptions, and so many times, it can be the wrong kind of assumptions, such as, I’m not strong enough, I’m not smart enough, everyone is happier and more fulfilled than I am…

STOP! Don’t think ; ) gain AWARENESS…
1st step to become aware, to gain full conscious:
Meditate.

“Meditation is a fabulous method for stilling the mind and discovering what lies past the constant mind chatter that typically accompanies us throughout the day.”

Become a Meditation Technology geek to go deep within and get access to “personal guidance, communicating with departed loved ones, finding creative inspiration and improved focus, and most importantly, to get to know your deepest inner self, as an eternal spiritual being related to all that exists.” Words of Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, that since a near-death experience (NDE), in which he spent a week in coma from an inexplicable brain infection, has turn his research towards the connection between our mind and spirit.



“Keep your best wishes, close to your heart and watch what happens”
―
Tony DeLiso

The Will for Meaning

"(...) man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life."

_

Viktor Frankl

 

For most of us, thankfully, our basic needs are met daily. Not only we have food, a place to sleep, friends, we also have technology that allows us to know more about the world. But we also have infinite choices and no excuse not to be productive, creative, successful, smart, independent, strong, happy!

Do we feel happy most of the time? or do we feel more like trapped in "happiness"?

 

We know this, we know that material stuff doesn't bring lasting happiness, but why? What's lacking? Meaning. Things, people or actions bring us happiness when they mean something important to you.

"We need a different conception of happiness, more enduring and more genuine, not dependent on external circumstances. (...) The key to a healthy life is having a healthy mind."

_

Richard J. Davidson

 

So we can work towards that Happiness!

People argue that the circumstances, the timing, the weather it's just not right.  But what's not right is how we separate our left brain from our right, how we separate looking versus feeling successful.

Yes, the magic dust is: to Feel.

"Being an educated person requires—being a full person, requires a certain ability to deal with dissonance. (...) I’m Jewish, was raised Jewish. I brought up my kids in the Jewish tradition. We celebrate Jewish traditions. And the religion means something to me. At the same time, I’m a scientist. And data means an awful lot to me. And I clearly believe in evolution and it’s really hard to get away from the undirected nature of change selected by environment and, you know, the science I do has really, leaves very little room for purpose in evolution. And yet there are deep reasons to want to have purpose in life. (...)  I don’t attempt to reconcile the religious side and the scientific side. Just as I don’t try to ever argue that the scientific way of knowing is the only way of knowing. (...) You know, literature has ways of knowing that are non-scientific. (...) Art has ways of knowing that are different. Music has ways. And maybe someday people will be smart enough to integrate them into one common way of knowing."

_

Eric Lander

 

We need to feel the connection, we need to feel that Life is more that facts, money, things.
We need to feel there is something higher and greater than us.

"Studies of our biological constitution make it increasingly clear that we are social creatures of meaning, who crave a sense of coherence and purpose. Yet, our modern way of life seems to provide fewer and fewer opportunities to engage in the group life that satisfies these human needs—indeed, many of its structures and institutions stunts these very needs.”
_
Steven Quartz

Anne McIlroy, long-time journalist, when interviewing Dr. Beauregard, neuroscientist (from University of Montreal's psychology department) posed these questions about a scientific experiment with nuns: "Are humans hard-wired to have religious or spiritual experiences, which are common to almost every culture on Earth? What happens in the brain when they do have them? Is it something that non-religious people might be able to replicate with the right stimulation? Is a transcendent Buddhist experience, often described as feeling connected to everyone and everything in the universe, the same as Christians' unio mystica? Can religion and spirituality make people healthier, as some studies suggest?"

 

So, not only we do better when we believe in something, we become healthier, happier and even more productive!

 

"Individuals and organizations that see themselves as “more spiritual” do better. They are more productive, creative and adaptive. The people in these organizations are more energized and productive because their work isn't solely about stock options and vacations and coffee breaks. Spiritual organizations are animated by meaning, by wholeness, and by seeing their work connected to events and people beyond themselves. "

_

Mitroff and Denton

 

There's more...!

 

"I believe that inspired leadership boils down to two things. The world would be a better place if we loved each other, and if we told the truth. If I express love, will people think I am weak, flaky, without resolve? A leader who has the courage to be humble, forgiving, loving, and therefore authentic, is much more effective, and inspiring than one who works using fear psychosis. I define love as the place where my heart touches your heart, and adds to who you are as a person.”

_ 

Dr Lance Secretan, PhD

 

In the book "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse", Gregg Easterbrook writes: “Ever larger numbers of people enjoy reasonable standards of living, but may feel an inner pang on the question of whether their lives have purpose. Predicting transition from ‘material want’ is not to say that people will cease caring about material things; it is a prediction that millions will expect both pleasant living standards and a broad sense that their lives have purpose [emphasis added]. This is a conundrum, as the sense of meaning is much more difficult to acquire than possessions.”

 

In 2004, 10 years ago, here's what was predicted in Forbes Mag by journalist Rich Karlgaard: "(...) Meaning. Purpose. Deep life experience. Use whatever word or phrase you like, but know that consumer desire for these qualities is on the rise. Remember your Abraham Maslow and your Viktor Frankl. Bet your business on it."

Would you like a formula? Guess what, someone already thought about it:

The Pleasant Life, The Good Life & The Meaningful Life!

From the founder of Positive Psychology:

• The pleasant life: a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past, and future;
• The good life: using your signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification (through activities we like doing) in the main realms of your life;
• The meaningful life: using your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are.

_
Martim Seligman

 

Dr. Seligman believes that lasting happiness lies in progressing through each until we achieve the ability to have most of our happiness come from living the meaningful life. "Well-being cannot exist just in your own head. Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment."

 

 

 Make each ring count...

 

“Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth… This is the real message of love.”
—
Thich Nhat Hanh

Fear exists to keep us comfortable, but it's uncomfortable...

Fear exists to keep us comfortable, but it's uncomfortable...
So... release it! Bah, who cares about being comfortable!
Isn't better to be uncomfortably being hold by someone you like ; )
or uncomfortably waiting in line for that thing you want!
or, just not felling so at ease to try out that new thing...

Accept that life is uncomfortable and get the most out of it!
... hey, start avoiding want's "uncomfortable" and you'll see, that huge cloud over your head, puff, gone ; )

Speak with/to your mind

Why is it that it’s so much easier to correct others while it’s so much tougher for us to correct ourselves?

“Correct your mind & the rest will fall into place”
_

Buddha

We're too easy on words. We say them out loud and most of the time we don't measure their strength and consequences. But when they're directed at us, we can feel them alright and the anxiety that surges inside either makes us grab a bar of chocolate, a drink or a pillow.

We need to learn how to speak with ourselves, how to negotiate, how to build a trusting and caring relationship.

We believe that what we think can stay inside. We believe that if we don't address it, no harm will come, as it lies within the serpentine chaos of our mind, no one will see it, and we'll still look calm and stylish. Well, it doesn't work like that...

What we think not only doesn't stay inside, hidden, as it can also harm us.

Our thoughts are like the air we breath. Toxic air makes you sick. Toxic thoughts make you sick.

So, next time you see that you're building up a terrible script, dialogue in your head, shout: CUT!

And repeat the scene, this time, with your heart in it.

Love and respect yourself.

"Let your imagination do the hard work for you"

Grande Suspiro* ... Huge Sigh*

Study, think, give a good usage of your brain...

“Love includes a sense of responsibility, accepting others as they are, with all their strengths and weaknesses”
—
Thich Nhat Hanh